Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, an image forming method, and a storage medium for controlling temperature of a fixing unit for fixing a recording material onto a recording medium.
Description of the Related Art
In an image forming apparatus for thermally fixing a toner image formed by an electrophotographic method onto a recording paper, techniques for determining a fixing temperature in a fixing device according to an amount of a recording material (hereinafter, referred to as toner bearing amount) per unit area to be applied on a recording paper have been known. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2013-76953 discusses a technique for reducing power consumption to be required in an image forming apparatus by adjusting a fixing temperature of a fixing device according to a toner bearing amount.
In the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2013-76953, according to a toner bearing amount calculated based on image data, a fixing temperature is determined to adjust the fixing temperature for recording. Therefore, increase in the time required for the toner bearing amount calculation causes delay in print start of each page, and results in decrease in the print speed of the image forming apparatus. On the other hand, when a constant fixing temperature is applied to any of image data without calculating the toner bearing amount, image data requiring a small toner bearing amount is to be fixed at the fixing temperature that is higher than necessary. This causes increase in power consumption.